a1132: RE: a1081: Re: a1063: Haiti and the Pact with Satan - (Saint-Vil applaudsSimidor) Bob Corbett adds. (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: karioka9@cs.com

My thanks to Jean St. Vil and to our host Bob Corbett for their gracious appreciation of my Bois Caiman post.  I command St. Vil in particular for staying clear of the cheap nationalist posturing favored by the populist element now in power.  For a Ginou-ist to keep his cool when the great Ginou himself is being treated like a valet is commendable indeed.  At any rate, the verdict is still out on whether Toussaint actually initiated the great General Uprising at the instigation of the French authorities.

Bob's point on historical myths is also well taken.  Some pretty silly stuff has been written into the history books, and Hoffman is quite justified in mocking their authors.  There is the case of the noirist Edner Brutus (or was it daddy Timoleon?) who read Herard Dumesle's dramatic rendition of Boukman's prayer and took it as verbatim speech.  Hoffmann quotes him as marveling very proudly at Boukman's classic alexandrine oratory!

The point of my post was, however, that Hoffman did not check all the sources available before putting forth his provocative claim at the Paris Conference.  What is myth and what is historical fact?  Having contrasted Dalmas' account with Garran Coulon's well-documented "Inquiry into the Causes of the Insurrection of the Negroes in the Island of St. Domingo" (1797), which only mentions the Mezy meeting, and having discredited the malevolent Frenchman (Dalmas) as an enemy of the Haitian revolution, Hoffman rushed to the conclusion that the Bois Caiman ceremony was a myth. Unfortunately for him, Geggus had no difficulty identifying at least two independently sources that corroborate Dalmas' tale.

Without reading too much into his gaffe or double faux pas, it is fair to say that Hoffman is not as exacting in his research as he is toward other historians.  His familiarity with French sources on the Haitian revolution makes his disregard for Haitian historiography stand out even more sharply. Hoffman follows a pattern common among white historians, who cast themselves too often as self-appointed guardians at the gates of history, and seldom acknowledge the work of their native counterparts.  What they cannot deride, they simply ignore.  Rachel Beauvoir-Dominique's probe into the collective memory of the Morne Rouge area thus puts Hoffmann's challenge nicely into perspective.  But her advice to historians and cultural critics to come out into the field may be lost on Hoffman, who appears to have already passed from the field of Haitian studies (sort of like the uncouth guest who is not asked back because he had farted at the table).

Daniel Simidor